#I don't want to have to constantly put up with their bigotry exploitation and their constant threats of making me homeless (again) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dirhwangdaseul-archived · 3 years

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I don’t think Mackie is homophobic but I do think the phrasing that gay shipping is some exploitative agenda set out to disgrace male friendships is really bad and reminiscent of old homophobic talking points. But considering how racist fandoms are it’s like I barely want to criticize it because I don’t want people who are chomping at the bit to be mad at a Black man to see me in their ranks. Like I think I’m gonna just let this one go.

tbh no i don't see it as homophobic talking points when that has been the dominating conversation surrounding him, like idk the entirety of the view of a celebrity because in the end they're just people, what we see is what they want us to see at the moment, but i do know what it means for someone to be immersed in a particular space and to only have certain words to speak about the experience in that space, and the thing is, there is not that much seriousness when it comes to people's engagement with the captain america mythos, and i know i have had my own negativity with it but it still has an impact in the world for the main hero of a country like the us to be a black man and mackie clearly cares about that first and foremost and the opportunity for him and his cap to be seen as that center of the narrative is overtaken by shippers almost always like do you think that's what he wants to interact with? at all? and what does this shipper culture have? i do think shipping actually disregards male friendships but that's because that's their echo chamber, their water and bread, the air they breathe in and like as if it was only male friendships they disregard, fandom and shippers gut any kind of content into the same vapid shit time and time again, and i don't doubt that is becoming increasingly what he sees as his reception of his cap and maybe it's all my impressions and I'm just projecting lmfao but i don't think im wrong when i see constantly fans of color have to defend sam of the most atrocious characterizations that always end up centering bucky as this white holy dick to worship like i get i do but do i do think people should put a lot of perspective into how mackie might be seeing all this unfold, and also the reception to these comments is just straight up disgusting in terms of the circus being made of it, elizabeth olsen, jeremy renner, rdj, have all been racist with slurs from the first two and in recent times and they are still lauded and defended and fans even go as far as to try to bury their instances of bigotry, like god there are nazis in this fandom but it's always a celebrity of color that gets crucified for things that don't have an ill intent and rather are worded badly

the lack of empathy and jump to actual cruelty when it comes to celebrities of color is what always astounds me really

#like the criticisms i could take if i didn't pay attention to fandom and reviews #iwhave to #i cannot watch these kind of things with characters of color #without looking at the reception cause it always tells me what to watch out for #what to consider what to see #mackie #el suco answers

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freedom-of-fanfic · 5 years

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Hello! I've noticed you've been reblogging a lot of stuff about "queer as a slur" lately, and I had a question. Is it okay for someone to be totally cool with queer as a word used by and for others, but uncomfortable with being called it on a personal level? I don't feel comfortable asking people to not call me queer because I'm scared they'll get angry at me for not wanting to personally reclaim the word. Thank you!

of course it’s okay to not want ‘queer’ applied to you while being okay with other people calling themselves ‘queer’.

furthermore: you absolutely do not need the permission of queer people - me or anyone else - to feel that way.

there are people who no doubt get angry that not everyone who could ‘count’ as queer doesn’t want to be considered ‘queer’, because there are assholes in every community. but i’m going to say it outright, right now: they’re assholes. you don’t have to listen to them.

‘queer’ is an opt-in identity.

if you don’t identify as ‘queer’, you’re not queer. anyone who tells you otherwise is being a jerk.

I have heard of 1 (out of thousands) of queer-identified people trying to demand everyone who is non-cis &/or non-straight reclaim the word ‘queer’. that’s it. (seriously: i feel safe saying ‘probably like 97% of queer people won’t resent your choice or get angry at you over it.’)

where things get complicated is:

exclusionists/radfems(especially TERFs) using the ‘not everyone wants to reclaim the word ‘queer’’ argument to trample on those of us who do choose to reclaim ‘queer’ - constantly coming into our spaces to remind us that not everybody is reclaiming the word & therefore our reclaiming the word is somehow hurtful.

that’s bigotry exploiting your position, anon - not your fault, but good to be aware of.

the resulting backlash from exclus & radfems exploiting the experiences of people who don’t reclaim the word ‘queer’ can create hostility towards people like you, anon.

that hostility comes from people who assume you’re telling people like me that you don’t want to reclaim ‘queer’ for yourself specifically to spite me. which, of course, makes people like you you want to apologize and get permission to not reclaim ‘queer’ even more, which makes ppl resent your need for permission, etc etc. … it’s a negative feedback loop.

the tl;dr is:

because you don’t need permission to not reclaim ‘queer’, you never need to tell people who do reclaim ‘queer’ that you’re not reclaiming it (unless they’re trying to force their reclamation on you).

you can just ignore posts reclaiming ‘queer’ if you want and know that literally 97% of queer people will not resent you for it.

there’s definitely a difference between queer people calling themselves queer and straight cis ppl (or exclus/radfems) calling them ‘qu**r’ or ‘the qu**rs’.

just because we’ve reclaimed the word ‘queer’ doesn’t mean we’re okay with people sneering it at us to hurt us, or using the word ‘queer’ as a noun (’qu**rs’) rather than an adjective (’queer community’).

when straight cis people refer to all of us as ‘the queer community’ on the news or whatever, that’s not fair to the part of Pride that identifies as queer or to the part that doesn’t. (I wish ‘MOGAI’ hadn’t been successfully disparaged by exclusionists for this reason.)

we’re not all ‘queer’ (and we don’t have to be). that’s why ‘Q’ is a letter in the alphabet soup acronym version of our communal ‘name’.

finally:

‘queer’ has a political & academic meaning beyond identifying as ‘queer’. i.e.; to advocate for queerness is to advocate for putting a nonbinary lens on the world.

instead of assuming binary states - boy or girl, straight or gay, cis or trans, white or not, abled or disabled, nt or nd, etc - queer theory proposes looking at everything as existing on a spectrum, and people as having infinite existences on various spectrums. the goal is to see how that creates a more realistic - & therefore more effective - approach to real life problems.

when people talk about ‘queerness’ from an academic or political position, it often addresses problems that face the wider Pride community, whether they identify as ‘queer’ or not. however, because we use the same word for both the academic study & identity (’queer’), that can get confusing & hurtful to people who don’t identify as queer.

tl;dr: queer does have more than one form of applicability, which means that even if you don’t identify as queer you may encounter the word being applied to your experiences without intended malice. I don’t have any suggestions for rectifying that right now, but I hope it helps to know that in that context, it’s not intended to ‘other’ you. :(

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thanks for giving me a good opportunity to address some of the issues that rise up for not-queer-identified members of Pride who get caught in the middle of this nasty exclu/radfem(TERF) ‘anti-queer’ attack & the resulting backlash. you don’t deserve to get slammed because of bigots who use your experiences as shields to hide their bigotry behind.

PS - added tags to clearly note this is an americentric take on the word ‘queer’! thank you @asynca for the note on that

#queer is a reclaimed slur #this is an americentric post #this is a us centric post #exclusionists and radfems is the same #terf rhetoric #the ones who get left behind #intracommunal identity politics #identity politics #respectability politics #queer theory #Anonymous

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